


pauldron

by feltstrips



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Age Difference, Car Sex, Experimental Style, M/M, Minor Injuries, Pseudo-Incest, Stream of Consciousness, pw/p
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2020-01-12 05:55:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18440408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feltstrips/pseuds/feltstrips
Summary: 1:12, 8/24/19; Klaus, unprovoked, referred to Five as quote  "a gerteratic little popover" unquote.





	pauldron

**Author's Note:**

> full disclosure i wrote this 100% high out of my mind and ""edited"" it on the comedown so yknow. typos at best

22:00, 8/23/19; Klaus leaned over from the shotgun seat and said _hit the ground running is such an alluring phrase, innt,_ slipping into a northern-midwestern kind of accent for the final word and then miming his head exploding, little finger-leg soldiers trotting frantically through the air.

22:15, 8/23/19; Klaus blew a raspberry and sneezed in the same breath.

23:04, 8/23/19; The stereo lost signal on a Red Hot Chili Peppers song (with a spectacular garbling fizz) and Klaus burst into tears. When questioned, he explained it as _tears of relief for such a butterfly effect,_ and that he was _glad to be in a world with melting radio towers._

24:43, 8/24/19; Klaus recited what he swore to was, verbatim, a speech Sir Reginald Hargreeves gave at Allison’s sixteenth birthday party, including but not limited to _you are a woman, now, and you must take the world by storm; but there can be multiple storms at once. Keep this in mind and keep this sawed-off in your skirt pocket,_ in response to Five claiming Klaus had the “memory of a goldfish with stage-4 cancer,” loosely paraphrased.

1:12, 2/24/19; Klaus, unprovoked, referred to Five as a _gerteratic little popover_.

And it goes on. Klaus is one hell of a Savant when you get him bored, get him rambling. Diego should start selling this shit. Chapbooks? Mad Lib starters?

“How long?”

“Same as it was,” Five checks that ever-present glossy pocketwatch, “two minutes ago.” 

“Twelve hours?”

“Twelve, count’ em, twelve hours,” Klaus laughs from the backseat, stretched out, unlit joint held in a silent pout to the no-stinking-up-the-van rule, and says “Oh, I love Cherry Wilder.”

Five clicks the pocketwatch shut. Diego pulls a hand over his chin in the dusty way that means he's trying not to punch the dashboard. “I’m going to sleep.”

Five inclines his head- “incline” rather than “nod” because to nod he’d need a little pep to the motion and he looks nothing but calculated and stiff, like a pair of wool dress pants left to dry on the line- and twists a little in the driver’s seat. Stares out the picture windshield at their ‘mark’; a little ramshackle, falling-down farmhouse, punched in and waterstained as a carnival ticket, glassless sliding back door. Grass sprouts from the roof. It looks like a dead thing ready to pull from the ground and shamble away.

Diego shuffles himself, a deck of cards taking his shotgun shift, and tucks his head into the cradle of the seatbelt. He's dozed off in worse places.

\--

The light is dull, blueish-black, nighttime air. The radio is turned off and tuneless white noise fills the space, greedy. Diego thinks that’s what popped him upright; not woken, really, just gently dragged hands-and-knees-in the-gravel style slow, languid, if you can call road rash languid, but- he's not really awake. He hears things in bits and pieces and they flash behind his eyes, that fill-in-the-blank game of fog that comes at the verge of sleep. Stubborn; standing against that dark tide, classically leaning, toes dug into the sand, some elephantine rock formations patterning the scenery and waves breaking on old, old crevices. All behind his eyelids. He doesn’t know, man. He’s tired, and hours cooped up with Klaus would give anyone a contact high.

It’s loud out there, with his ear pressed, voyeuristic, into the glass. Spring peepers. Cicadas. Crickets, probably. Night bugs and also Klaus, now, he should be counted in that group; he mutters _augh, sorry, wrong button,_ from around Diego’s feet. In the ballpark, waveringly. He hears a click and cracks open an eye, curious but not suicidal- if Klaus sees he's awake he’s going in for the conversation and Diego’s had his fill of that, can’t stomach any more- and sees him shirtless, palely florescent in the dawdling, watered-down blue, and he’s fucking around with something mechanical down there. Takes him a sec, but there; he’s put the cigarette lighter in. So much for breathable air. 

Klaus pushes the radio back on via indented, old-fashioned button, quick jabby poke, got some pep to it. Diego’s lulled back to dozing by drifting, hole-punched snippets of a Cage the Elephant [tune](https://youtu.be/bZBmcSBoRAE). As he goes down; the nocturnal buzz of those damn nightbugs, Klaus knocking his knees on the doors and jostling the whole van, and what he's realized is Five’s voice, whispering. Secretive, in that wet-behind-the-ears conspiratorial hiss of his. It blends better than the everyday cacophony at the gym; the rolling-barrel, sped up hum of wheels on tarmac on the highway all southeast of his head; the humming, hateful lightbulb; Al, at four in the morning, shuffling around on those old legs. _Five doesn’t have it so bad,_ Diego thinks, and that’s the last thought he's got. Clutch it, fare for the ferryman.

\--

When Diego free-floats back to the land of the living, not much time has passed. The light has just started to wind up; sunrise shows on the flat angles of the guardrail, all huddled at the dead end of the road, the view through the windshield’s first eye-catcher. The gnawed-out windows of the abandoned house, the peeling paint made fleshy peach-yellow, the golden budged tree branches, reaching. Spreading out the ceiling, the rooftop or what once was. Mom once told him that all good pictures draw his eye to the center but this one draws him outwards. Radiates. What’s the difference? It’s peaceful.

Then Five comes lurching between the two front seats, looking like a mermaid thrust against a rock what with his bare torso, his cutoff lower half out of sight. His palms slap the pho-leather armrests and he goes, crackly, “Easy, you sonofabitch.” Diego jumps a little- yes, yes, get your kicks now- but, wisely, he’s silent. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this out; Five’s body is rocking, rhythmic like he’s spare clothes being jammed into a suitcase. Chest-shuddering puffs spilling from his mouth, his fingers flexing, unflexing. Klaus groans, chuckles from somewhere in the void behind Diego’s headrest. Should he say something? No?

Five tacks the tip of his tongue between his teeth to go with his scrunched-down brows, digging his fingernails into the armrest two inches from Diego’s forearm. There’s sweat on his upper lip. It’s hot in here and he’s blushing, least Diego thinks he is, but it’d be more generous to say all the blood is pooling in his cheeks. Klaus’ white hand, 90% black nails, comes creeping along with his arm pulling behind like the tail on a kite. He traces the stick-out tendons in Five’s grip. Real gentle-like.

“Ugh, this’ll hit the spot, yeah?” Klaus says, whittling, still disembodied, peripheral, and Five’s eyebrows knot tighter, “juss’a’lil elbow grease.”

“Can you be quiet,” Five says.

“No, not one of my perks.”

There’s that old Evanescence song playing, tinny, on the radio. Klaus must snap his hips because Five jostles forward. Swears. Pleather squeaks against his tacky, sweaty skin, his shoulders trying to jam between the seats whether he likes it or not. Pricks of heat start up in Diego’s ears, work downward, he’s sitting stock still, heart going like a drumstick smacking on a water balloon. They don’t even glance at him.

“Raise your hips, dear,” says Klaus, and Five does more than that, shoves his ass backward with vengeance and Klaus huffs something whiny. A little bit of spit flicks onto Five’s lower back. Just a white dot, lost on the last part of him Diego can see. Can’t sneak a peek without craning his neck; can’t move without getting fingered as a peeping tom. Like a puppet show. Gross. 

Klaus starts up with this nh-nh-nh kind of noise, chock full of effort, and Five’s head droops down between his forearms. He says “That’s more like it,” gruff, totally unexposed. Rocking like a Newton's cradle. He has to be getting one hell of a rugburn on his nubby elbows.

“ ‘Course,” says Klaus, the slight spit-click sound of lips lifting off teeth saying he’s smiling again, ish, and he breathes out “Oh, fuck, please do that again,” girly, high, when Five’s shoulder muscles- barely there, just a twist about, underdeveloped- bunch and he pushes back. Probably clenches up. Diego can’t imagine how tight he must be. There’s something horribly familiar about this, like maybe he caught it on a rerun episode of NOVA, or Animal Planet.

Five- head still between his arms, talking into the upholstery- says “Pass me one of those,” and an obedient pair of fingers stretches up a cigarette, Adam and God, or whatever that painting’s called. Five picks his head up and Diego can see the smirk lifting his cheeks. He reaches for the cigarette lighter, does what it says on the tin. Sucks in, hard, the filter hissing, blows out a stinking plume of smoke. It bunches up and spills out like a slow-motion firehose against the lower glove compartment. 

Five lets the cancer stick dangle from his lips and says “Pull out.” Wet sound like a boot in the mud. He turns over, bumping his hips, scraping against the floor. Grabs some part of Klaus and yanks him back and Five tilts out fullscale as he’s filled up again, pulled achingly taut, his arms held triangular at his ears. The cherry glows precarious over his skin. 

“Slap me with a spoon,” says Klaus, appreciative, “look at you.” 

Five takes a long drag, like he’s on a barest of the bare nicotine high and trying to get somewhere fast. Stretches and cracks his back. There’s the rugburn on his elbows, yep, bobbing in the air, still being driven back-forth. He chokes on his next inhale- stuck on a moan, Diego thinks- and Klaus snickers. 

“Careful there, grandpa.”

Five flicks a stare, incidentally aimed towards Diego’s calf. Contemplative. His throat’s all mapped-out geometric curves and he says, “Couldn’t have put it better myself,” and reaches for Klaus’ hand, the one that’d been on Five's stomach. When he takes it, palm up like a fortune teller, Diego sees the slightest, slightest glimpse of the dip beneath Five’s navel sinking, filling out, sinking. And Five takes the hand and reads Klaus’ palm and it says GOODBYE, only one fate. 

Guess Five likes that, finds it funny because he hums a showtune opener- Addams Family, maybe- and wrenches- he’d never let go of the cigarette lighter- he wrenches Klaus’ hand and holds it in place and presses the still faintly-orange circle off-center in the second O in GOODBYE and it sizzles. Diego can hear the raw-meat hiss even over Klaus’ shriek.

**Author's Note:**

> someones nose should break


End file.
